The 11th International Conference The Border: A New Cultural Concept will take place May 2- 4, 2007 in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico.

"Cuatro Décadas del Modelo Maquilador en el Norte de México" 30 y 31 Octubre 2006 more >

"El Santo Niño de Atocha: Shifting Meanings of Cross-Border Devotion," November 9, 2006, 5:00 p.m. Tubac Room, UA Student Union more >

Vistas of the Frontera: Anna Jaquez, September 23, 2006 - November 26, 2006, Tucson Museum of Art

Arquitectura Simulacro: Nogales, Tijuana, Juárez
Eloy Mendez, El Colegio de Sonora
Friday April 7, 2006, 8:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Sabino Room, UA Student Union Memorial Center [map]
download the announcement [PDF 139K]

Lineae Terrarum, March/Marzo 27-30, 2006 . Ciudad Juárez - El Paso - Las Cruces

Masked Marvels -- Las Super Luchas
Xavier Garza, author and artist, San Antonio, Texas.
Friday, April 7, 2006, 7:00 p.m. Center for English as a Second Language, (CESL Auditorium) [map]
download the announcement [PDF 200K]

Tucson Meet Yourself, October 7-9

U of A Borderlands Special Collections --exhibit and talk by José David Saldivar, October 3rd. Read more

		From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture, 1990-2005, a talk by Sydney Hutchinson, ethnomusicologist NYU FRIDAY, September 9 10:00– 11:00 AM ILC Room 150 (Manuel Pacheco Integrated Learning Center) Sponsored by: THE SOUTHWEST CENTER as a joint project with Fronteridades: Border Cultures and Performances Working Group (for more information contact: alvarezm@u.arizona.edu)

Quebradita, meaning "little break," is a modern Mexican American dance as well as a transnational musical style that became hugely popular in Los Angeles and across the southwestern United States during the early to mid 1990s. Recognizable by its western clothing, energetic brass band music, hat tricks, and daring flips, the quebradita's novel combination of Mexican, Anglo, and African American influences represented a new mestizaje with a rasquache sensibility that appealed to the thousands of young people who participated in quebradita dance groups. Though short-lived, the dance was significant for its confrontational aesthetics as well for as its political and sociocultural functions, emerging as it did in response to the anti-immigrant and English-Only legislation that was then being enacted in California. Since then, a related yet distinct dance called pasito duranguense ("the little step from Durango") has emerged from Chicago and taken the rest of the U.S. and northern Mexico by storm. Possibly a result of the new wave of xenophobia resulting from the September 11 attacks, the pasito shows the continuing relevance of regional Mexican music within the U.S. context.

This talk is based on fieldwork conducted in Tucson, Hermosillo, Los Angeles, and Chicago in 1999 and 2005. The author combines interviews and observations conducted in these locations with analysis of films, CDs, and media coverage to arrive at an understanding of these dance-based youth cultures and what they did.

Sydney Hutchinson is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at New York University, where her dissertation research examines the intersections of merengue típico music with migration, class structure, and gender issues in New York and the Dominican Republic. In 2002, she received a master's degree from Indiana University's Folklore Institute with a thesis on quebradita dancing in the Southwest. Hutchinson is now completing a book based on the thesis, which will be published by the University of Arizona Press in 2007.